Many travellers snap pictures during their trips, but others find that slowing down to illustrate a place helps them appreciate it in a more meaningful way.
Back in the 1800s, French artists like Eugène Louis Boudin and Claude Monet packed their paint brushes and set off on long excursions to capture the natural landscape – and in the process, revolutionised art as people knew it.
While painting outdoors on location has been around for roughly 200 years, the “en plein air” (open-air) art movement popularized by Boudin, Monet and others has recently inspired a newer trend: urban sketching. The term was coined by journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario in 2007 after he began sharing his drawn-on-the-spot work online and urged others to join in. This casual, free-spirited approach to en plein air art is often accompanied by text to tell the story of the artist’s surroundings when they travel.
“Sketching on the go at different places around the globe… opens your eyes to everything from the obvious to the invisible. A sketch captures a memory of people and places in a way that a photograph never can,” says Annette Morris, watercolour artist and education director at Urban Sketchers, a global community founded by Campanario that organises urban sketching walks, meet-ups and international trips for painting enthusiasts.
Morris has noticed that as people have become increasingly interested in more immersive travel experiences, there has been a notable rise in the number of people booking urban sketching retreats in the last few years. Since launching in 2009, Urban Sketchers has expanded to 477 cities in 70 countries, and it has opened more than 60 new chapters since the start of 2023.
Alex Hillkurtz, an urban sketcher living in Paris who leads painting workshops and retreats, believes drawing or painting on-location helps travellers slow down and experience a place in a different way.
“While travelling, there’s a tendency to rush through bucket-list experiences. Urban sketching retreats allow us to step out of the hustle by creating something by hand,” he explains. “As we draw, we notice the beauty in the ordinary: the way sunlight warms a scene, the comings and goings of locals in a market and the colours reflected in the water fountain.”
I had long looked to bring my two biggest passions together – art and travel – and chronicle my encounters and experiences in a way that went beyond writing and photography. So, when I discovered urban sketching during the pandemic, I couldn’t resist the idea of creating art in the open and slowing down to fully absorb a place and moment.
I went on my first urban sketching trip in 2023 with Painting Holiday Italy in Cinque Terre, a string of five coastal villages on the Italian Riviera. I remember feeling intimidated as I set up my easel and sketchbook inMonterosso al Mare’s Borgo Antico (Old Town) that first morning surrounded by my instructor and fellow sketchers. However, with each brushstroke, I soon became more and more engrossed by the village’s arched passageways, cobblestone streets, lemon trees and bougainvillaea-clad pastel houses. I found that when you stand still and spend hours absorbing and rendering the small details around you, you appreciate a place’s nuances in a different way. As a result, at the end of the five-day retreat I returned home with a deeper appreciation for Ligurian cuisine, culture and architecture. Â
In the following months, I sketched my way through India, Bhutan, Georgia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Seychelles; my constant companions were an A5 sketchpad, a pencil, fine-liner pens and a mini watercolour set.
“As an art instructor, it’s wonderful to see how each participant brings a fresh perspective to what’s in front of them,” says Alicia Aradilla, who has completed more than 700 watercolours from 20 countries and now leads urban sketching workshops and retreats. “Every sketchbook ends up being different; I find that incredibly appealing about sketching trips.”
Here are some of my and my fellow urban sketchers’ favourite travel moments rendered in watercolour, and the story behind each.
